Symbolism: Fantastic Realities

Odilon Redon - The Cyclops - c. 1900 - Oil on canvas (click photo for larger image)During the decades before 1900--and into the twentieth century--the Symbolists were the avant-garde, and one of quite a new kind, influencing not only the arts but also the thought and spirit of the epoch. Symbolists believed that art should aim to capture  absolute truths, which could only be accessed by indirect methods. Thus, they wrote and painted in a highly metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. They drew upon everything from religious art to literature to dream imagery. The Symbolist Manifesto claimed Symbolism to be hostile to "plain meanings, declamations, false sentimentality and matter-of-fact description", stating that its goal instead was to "clothe the Ideal in a perceptible form" whose "goal was not in itself, but whose sole purpose was to express the Ideal”. Odilon Redon was one of the masters of Symbolism. A piece on him will follow soon!